Goodbye today.com, you are too stupid to live.

[reddragdiva]

You will not MAKE MONEY FAST from blogging. No, you will not. I strongly suggest the time-honoured MAKE MONEY SLOW scheme where you show up to a place of business and do something of economic value for fortyish hours a week.

notnews.today.com started because a friend of arkady's, who was working for today.com for a while and now isn't (he is far, far too nice and too classy to bitch; I am neither), pointed out I could get $1/post plus $2/1000 clicks for blogging. Hey, who knows! So of course I started writing fake news, having done a lot at Uncyclopedia UnNews.

This was fine for a while. It kept my brain working and my creative juices ticking — that's the main good effect on me. I got enough cash to pay for groceries once a month, and there was a reasonable community of entertaining writers on the forum. (I suspect it was me that lured Hindleyite over.)

Then today.com cut the per-click, to much protest. Then they emailed me in early December that NotN wasn't getting enough clicks (at about 1000 UV/day) to rate a whole $1 per post. I went to the forum to see if anyone was still getting it, and gosh, the forum was shut down for maintenance. Still is, strangely enough.

Considering the best feedback I get on my fake news endeavours is from my friends, I decided that £15/month was really not enough to inflict FLOATING FLASHING POPUP ADS on you lovely people. Also, I make approximately two hundred and forty times this from the good old-fashioned Make Money Slow plan.

I gave up writing anything for these idiots and started thinking up domain names, since all obvious variants on "News of the News" had been taken. Eventually I was drunk down the pub with nyecamden, genetikayos and a netbook and bought newstechnica.com (and .co.uk and .org.uk). And I've been writing more stuff, on a site that looks 1000% better, with COMPLETE CONTROL. And all my old stuff imported from the other site. Hooray!

Today at 17:15, I received this:

Subject: Today.com - Sharing Revenue in 2010

Welcome to the Today of the Future

As we move into the New Year we've revised the Today.com compensation
plan to include Google AdSense. Today.com will split all Google
AdSense earnings on each blog 50/50 with its VIP bloggers. In addition we
will donate 5% of our share to a charity to help Americans in today's
economy.

Simply log into your Today.com account, and submit your Google Adsense 
Publisher Id and you're ready to go! For more information on setting up 
your account, please reference the Today.com wiki at:
http://today.com/wiki/index.php/Google_AdSense

To coincide with the Google AdSense Revshare launch, our latest
revshare enhancement, Today.com will be removing PPM compensation from
the program. Earnings already accumulated will not be affected by this
change.

It is important to note that this does not take away from your ability
to earn money with Today.com. Today.com already has established
affiliate and revshare programs in place to add to your earnings.

Advertising Revshare Program
http://today.com/wiki/index.php/Advertising_Revshare

Affiliate Referral Program
http://today.com/wiki/index.php/Affiliate

Product Affiliate Program
http://today.com/wiki/index.php/Product_Affiliate_Program


In addition to revshare considerations we've implemented new Content
and Site Management Guidelines. Many are the same guidelines that were
already in place; however experience has made it necessary to require
bloggers to take SEO into consideration when drafting their posts and
to make modifications to their sites according to the new rules.

In particular we are banning widgets altogether unless they are Today.com 
affiliate/referral widgets or WordPress widgets related to navigating your
site. In addition we are outlining rules for the About page. All pages on 
any site must follow the rules that apply to posts. Pages with any personal, 
referral, affiliate, or advertising links not specific to any Today.com 
affiliate program will be removed.
no per
For more information on the new rules and a refresher on the rules
that have always been in place visit:
http://today.com/wiki/index.php/Content_and_Site_Management_Guidelines

For bloggers looking to propose a new blog in another topic area (new
topics added), we invite you to apply at:
http://www.today.com/register-new

Today.com wishes you a Happy and Prosperous New Year.

Sincerely,
The Today.com Team

The takehome from this is: no per-post, now no per-click, but you do get 50% of the Google ad revenue! Rather than the 100% you'd get writing on, e.g., Blogspot or your own installation of WordPress.

I went to the site and, in a major whiny little bitch dummy-spit, removed all my images, removed all the text I could and set the theme to white-on-white everything. It was like that for about an hour, then they restored what they could with a generic theme and my login no longer works.

Update: Bitch-a-rama!

It was fine while it was fine, then it wasn't and it wasn't. So, NewsTechnica for the win! If you're on DreamWidth, the syndicated feed is newstechnica_feed. If you're on LiveJournal, the syndicated feed is newstechnica. So you don't have to wait for me to bother posting something to see when there's a new story.

NewsTechnica is currently running about 200-300 UVs (unique views) a day, rather than the 1000 or so the old site was. I expect this will pick up with time. TELL YOUR FRIENDS.

Comments

[reddragdiva]

Thannnnk you :-* Happy NewsTechnica Year!